24. Criticize the reasoning in the following extract from a letter to a newspaper urging Republican and Democratic tickets at the municipal election in a small city in the country.
It is an acknowledged fact that competition in the business life of our city is beneficial to the consumer. If that be so, why will not competition in city affairs bring equally good results to the taxpayer?
25. Give an example you have recently heard of hasty generalization; explain its weakness.
26. Give an example of your own of the post hoc fallacy.
27. Give an example of false reasoning based on assuming a complex fact to be simple.
28. Criticize the reasoning in the following extracts:
a. [Dispatch to a daily paper.] Haverhill, March 30, 1911. Opponents of commission form of government are deriving no little satisfaction from the development of testimony borne out by figures taken from the auditing department of the city of Haverhill that this method of administering municipal affairs has proved thus far to be a costly experiment there.... The total amount of bonds issued during the past twenty-seven months, covering the period of operation of commission form of government, was $576,000; the present borrowing capacity of the city is only approximately $35,000; that the city's bonded debt has increased from $441,264 to $1,181,314 in the past five years; the net bonded debt has more than doubled within three years; that the assessed valuation has increased $5,000,000; and the tax rate has been raised from $17.40 to $19 in five years. The borrowing capacity of ($341,696 on January 1, 1906, has decreased to $95,000 on January 1, 1911.... Commission form of government went into effect in Haverhill on the first Monday in January, 1909.
b. From an article in a magazine, opposing the plan of the postmaster-general to increase the postage on the advertising sections of magazines: consider especially the word "censorship":
We see two grave objections to the postmaster-general's plan. First, it requires a censorship to determine what periodicals are "magazines" whose advertising pages are to be taxed, and what are the educational and religious periodicals which are to continue to enjoy what the President calls a "subsidy." Such a censorship would be a new feature in postal administration, and it would seem to be a thing very difficult to work out on any fair basis.
29. In a newspaper report of an inquiry made by the director of the Columbia University gymnasium into the effects of smoking, the following sentences occur:
In scholarship the nonsmokers had the distinct advantage. The smokers averaged eighty per cent in their studies at entrance, sixty-two per cent during the first two years, and seven per cent of failure. The nonsmokers got ninety-one per cent in their entrance examinations and sixty-nine per cent in their first two years in college, while only four per cent were failures. In this respect Dr. Meylan thinks there is a distinct relation between smoking and scholarship.
Of the same set of students forty-seven per cent of the smokers won places on varsity athletic teams, while only thirty-seven per cent of the nonsmokers could get places.
If the next to the last sentence had read, "Smoking therefore seems to be a cause of low scholarship," what should you think of the reasoning?